It is one of our museum’s little success stories: this year will see the art vending machine’s fifth (and, for now, last) tour of duty in the permanent exhibition. After five years “Art from the Vending Machine” will have sold over 12,250 works. Maren Krüger, curator of the permanent exhibition, explains its achievement thus: “We know that visitors enjoy taking something away with them, that they like surprises and are interested in the present time. In addition, we want a permanent exhibition that’s alive, that always offers something new. That’s how the concept emerged.”

As with all projects that work well, a number of people were involved. First of all, there’s Christiane Bauer, our former colleague who supplied the idea. She was inspired by the art vending machines at the Kunsttick Agency, which can now be found all over Germany. In fact, while searching online for a suitable model, she came upon an old vending machine from the 70s that stood in a sports center in the Rhineland-Palatinate province. First though, it had to be transported to Berlin…
To read the whole story, check out Christiane Bauer’s first blog post about the art vending machine.

The current round of works for the vending machine features the motto: “Summer of Strong Women”. It will thus hardly be a surprise that all the objects the machine is selling have been created by female artists. Nearly all of them are from Israel and all of them have a connection to the city of Berlin. In their art these women grapple with such topics as Jewish traditions, Israel, belonging, and homeland. The result is a colorful mix of items which are extraordinary not just in their materiality but also in their meaning.

Here’s a brief overview of the artworks and artists:

Born in Richon LeZion, Keren Shalev was interested as she developed her work in the question, “What does it mean to receive a souvenir?” or rather “How do visitors look at souvenirs?” She calls her object Organic Souvenir. It is intended to help visitors hold on to a certain moment or feeling that they had while at the museum.

Shai Keren, a product designer who’s been in Berlin for three years, contributed two works: 1) a dreidel that you can attach to the rim of your wine glass to mark that it’s yours, and 2) a little cloth bag with a variety of different stylized things printed on it. The label on the bag says alte Sachen (“old things”), which is tantamount in Yiddish to “second-hand articles”.

“I want everyone to smile when they look at my artworks,” says Yifah Raz. The Israeli artist created a most unusual ice cream on a stick with her Popsicle FORnEVER. Made of concrete, it is, as Raz points out, “good forever” — meaning it will maintain its form — but at the same time it’s “never good”, as in, forever inedible. In her FORnEVER series the artist points to the human need to hold onto things, whether a particular time period, a certain moment, or one’s own youth. In fact though, everything alive has, she reminds us, an “expiration date”.

A peculiarity of Shimrit Kalish’s photographs is that she depicts her own dreams. For her series Foreign Land the artist photographed only models from abroad which led to five different subjects emerging in the work: one, for instance, shows an interpretation of Moses on the hills of Jerusalem.

With her objet d’art The Black Tablets of Commandments, Alona Rodeh offers visitors the opportunity to write down entirely personal edicts. Whether they need a full ten is up to them. Since nothing here is being chiseled into stone, the owner of each handy little slab can wipe away what they’ve written periodically and start anew.

Shira Orion’s artwork partitions her own experiences into Past and Present. Surreal images printed in a leporello manner show the artist’s recollections from her (old) home of Israel as well as more recent impressions from her (new) home of Berlin.

The poem whispering home provides the nucleus of Adi Liraz’s item. The interdisciplinary artist wrote it first on her own body, then photographed it and through an elaborate process printed the picture on old bed linens. The question of home, of one’s own homeland, is something that she has been working on for a long time. In Berlin since 2003, the Israeli Liraz has observed over time that the Hebrew language has more and more come to represent “home” for her.

In her work Maja Gratzfeld cut up a picture into 500 individual pieces. Each visitor who pulls a piece of the puzzle from the art vending machine will take it home, wherever that may be. Each puzzle piece has a code. If the piece’s owner enters the code at the site http://www.the-dispersal-project.com/, they will unlock their particular piece and be able see it online. When all the puzzle pieces have been activated, the whole picture will become visible. Originally from Saarlouis in Germany’s Saarland province, Gratzfeld intended with her the dispersal project to create an artistic diaspora. Each piece of the puzzle symbolizes an individual who has moved from his or her place of origin to another place. All the pieces belong to one whole that connects them. If some of the pieces remain inactivated, you will see white patches on the image: they stand for the disappearance of customs, traditions, and languages that a diaspora inevitably brings with it.

Has your interest been sparked? Would you like to pull one of these fascinating objects out of our art vending machine? The opportunity is there until December 10. Until that date the machine will remain at the familiar spot in our permanent exhibition next to the Schteh Café , at the passage by the staircase from the first to the second level of the exhibition.

We wish you a wonderful time “pulling artwork” and an interesting visit to the exhibition!

At the press appointment with the artists blog editor David Studniberg unexpectedly received a little gift souvenir: Milk FORnEVER, a plastic cup with a splash of “concrete milk”, which now has its own special spot in his office.

]]>http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2017/08/last-round-for-now-art-vending-machine/feed/0The Restitution of the Banquethttp://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2017/01/restitution-banquet-mosse/
http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2017/01/restitution-banquet-mosse/#respondThu, 26 Jan 2017 23:05:13 +0000http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/?p=4874– The Story of a Search

This oil sketch entitled Das Gastmahl der Familie Mosse (The Mosse Family Banquet) was restituted to the community of heirs of Felicia Lachmann-Mosse; Photo: Jewish Museum Berlin, Jens Ziehe.

Today is the International Holocaust Remembrance Day when we also remember the consequences of the criminal Nazi regime, which can still be felt today. One of these consequences is that a lot of museums are still holding cultural artifacts that were unlawfully confiscated from their owners during the Nazi era. Thus the Jewish Museum Berlin restored the oil sketch Das Gastmahl der Familie Mosse (The Mosse Family Banquet) to the heirs of Felicia Lachmann-Mosse in December last year. How was this decision reached? Provenance research has attracted increasing attention in recent years and caused frequent rumblings in the media – but how is it actually carried out?

In general, the question is whether or not a work of art (or a book or other cultural artifact) changed hands during the Nazi era, whether it was unlawfully confiscated i.e. expropriated or underwent a forced sale. Should this be the case, the German museums, libraries, and archives have committed to return the artifact to its rightful heirs.

Photograph of the damaged wall painting by Anton von Werner from 1899 in the dining room of Mosse Palace at Leipziger Platz 15; Berlin University of the Arts

Since April 2015, I have been researching the history of paintings and sculptures from the collection at the Jewish Museum. One of the first art works that received my extensive attention is The Mosse Family Banquet, a sketch painted on canvas by the Berlin painter Anton von Werner. It was a preparatory work for a monumental mural commissioned by the Berlin publisher Rudolf Mosse in 1899. The original measuring two-and-a-half by five meters was so large that it covered the entire wall length. The painting found its home in the dining room of the so-called Mosse Palace at Leipziger Platz, a bourgeois town house that Rudolf Mosse bought in the 1880s and rebuilt to his taste. Rudolf Mosses art collection was on display in the mansion’s private and reception rooms – it had been accessible to visitors since the early 20th century and was often mentioned in publications of the time.

This art collection was auctioned at two Berlin auction houses in 1934. At the time the owners, Felicia Lachmann-Mosse, Rudolf Mosse’s daughter, her husband Hans and their three children had already fled Germany over a year earlier and were living in Switzerland, France, and England. After the war broke out, the family immigrated further afield to the USA. The family was able to save parts of the art collections from the family’s three prestigious residences and take them with them into immigration or have them sent on. The majority of the collection, however, was expropriated, sold, and scattered to the winds.

Tracing the paths of individual works of art is painstaking work. When I began researching the Banquet picture, the only information available was that the Berlin Museum, the predecessor of today’s Jewish Museum Berlin, had purchased it from an art trader in West Berlin in 1990. It also quickly became apparent that it was not among the paintings sold in one of the two auctions in 1934, as it is not mentioned in those catalogs.

First of all, I examined all the documents relating to the oil painting at the Jewish Museum Berlin. They showed that a descendant of the former owner had already been contacted to learn about the picture at the time of the purchase in 1990. Rudolf Mosse’s grandson, American historian George L. Mosse, could unfortunately not remember the sketch, but for that his memory of the original painting – which with its vast proportions dominated the dining room in his grandfather Rudolf Mosse’s house – was all the more vivid. The Jewish Museum Berlin repeatedly tried to learn more about the picture over the years, but these attempts always remained in vain.

My next trip was to the archives to study the files. The Mosse family had tried to reclaim their property after the end of the Second World War through the Federal Republic of Germany’s restitution and reparation procedures. This resulted in a years-long struggle that produced a vast amount of files. So for several weeks I pored over these in Berlin’s regional archive (Landesarchiv) and in various other authorities that had dealt with restitution and reparation in Berlin, but the Banquet sketch was not mentioned anywhere. I also tried to find traces of the picture in catalogs, contemporary literature, and in art and image databases. All in vain.

It is not at all unusual for provenance research to be laborious and unsuccessful and it is only in the rarest cases that a look at the relevant databases or on the back of a painting is sufficient to learn who the previous owner was and under what circumstances he/she lost it.

I found first clues about the Banquet sketch at the Jewish Museum Berlin in a collection of letters entitled “Mosse Estate” from prominent personalities to Rudolf Mosse and his wife Emilie. In one of the letters, the commissioned painter Anton von Werner wrote that he had delivered the sketches to the client. And in the Leo Baeck Institute’s online collection, there is a catalog of Rudolf Mosse’s art collection in which the sketch is mentioned. However, I only came across the crucial evidence in the archive of the art dealer Karl Haberstock, who was commissioned to auction the Mosse art collection. It was there that I found a list of price estimates that the art works to be auctioned in spring 1934 might fetch and on this list – created in August 1933 in preparation for the auction – is the Banquet sketch. Even though there is no evidence that it was sold at one of the two mandatory auctions, it is nonetheless proof that the picture was in that Berlin house at a time when the Mosse family had already left Germany. Thus, the family no longer had control over the picture nor had it received any sales proceeds. According to the guidelines of the federal government, states and municipalities in Germany, a persecution-induced dispossession is thus to be assumed.

That is why the Jewish Museum Berlin decided to restore the oil sketch of the The Mosse Family Banquet to Felicia Lachmann-Mosse’s heirs. The community of heirs, as rightful owner, consented to leaving the picture in the museum for a year as a loan. Thus it can continue to be admired as before in the permanent exhibition of the Jewish Museum Berlin (further information on the permanent exhibition).

Gleeful excitement in the museum lobby, for we are greeting our ten-millionth visitor since the opening in 2001, and we are all ears. “It’s my day off and I want to take the opportunity to revisit the permanent exhibition,” the 33-year-old Berliner Paula Konga tells us. An architect by profession, she is particularly interested in Daniel Libeskind’s design of the museum. “The building is well worth visiting more than once, also for Berliners.” No sooner have we handed over a bouquet of flowers and a one-year-membership in the Friends of the Jewish Museum Berlin Association than our guest of honor vanishes into the ramified spaces of the Libeskind Building (further information about the Libeskind Building can be found on our website).

Next, a group of Italian schoolchildren pushes past me, another museum visitor asks me to switch his audio guide to French, and a group of British teenagers mills about in search of a young man in a red cap. The seething mass sets me thinking: What actually moves you here, in the Jewish Museum Berlin? Is it really first and foremost the striking architecture? Happily, to pursue these and similar questions is part and parcel of my work at the museum, since I am employed in the department of Visitor Research and Evaluation. We regularly conduct studies and surveys in order to assess how effectively we are putting our message across, i.e. how successfully we communicate our thematic content to a variety of target groups.

Visitors in front of the new designed wall for sticky notes Jewish Museum Berlin CC-BY Alexa Kürth

In my mind’s eye appears an innovation in place at the end of the permanent exhibition since March 2015: in addition to the traditional visitors’ book, we provide sticky notes as a new means of making comments. Beneath the three questions “What was the most moving?”—”What was the most fun?”— “What was lacking?” visitors can post their responses on the wall.

The feedback is prolific. On average we find more than 150 sticky notes daily, as opposed to “only” 50 comments in the visitors’ book. I decide to take a look at 1000 sticky notes and 1000 visitors’ book entries, to find out what moves our museum visitors—and I am filled with curiosity.

Viewing and sorting the huge quantity of colorful notes instantly reveals how important it is to many of our visitors to immortalize themselves with a signature. This is apparent above all from the visitors’ book, in which over half the entries consist of a signature alone. This is the case in only 15% of the sticky notes, however. So far so good—now, what’s next? The content of the sticky notes is personal, expressive and direct. It most frequently concerns either Menashe Kadishman’s installation “Shalekhet” (Hebrew for “Fallen Leaves”), or the “Holocaust Tower,” or the pomegranate tree at the start of the permanent exhibition; and it takes the form of written comments or drawings.

It is likewise quickly apparent that a tour of the museum prompts our visitors to face up to and reflect on the crimes of the Nazi era (an outcome that naturally delights us). This is attested by the thoughts, appeals, and expressions of hope or gratitude made on sticky notes or in the visitors’ book, where one finds, for example: “Die menschliche Geschichte ist ein Schreck … Nicht vergessen, um zu vermeiden, dass die gleichen Fehler wieder gemacht werden.” (The history of mankind is a horror… Let us never forget, lest the same mistakes be repeated.) or “Ich danke Ihnen für die umfassende Information, auch wenn es kaum zu ertragen ist […].” (I thank you for this detailed information, even though it is difficult to bear […].). Visitors’ comments also call for peaceful, respectful co-existence, and equal rights: “Lasst uns friedvoll und in Demokratie zusammenleben! Was für ein eindrucksvolles Museum!” (Let’s live together in peace and democracy! What an impressive museum!), “Questo museo dà la consapevolezza di esistere – Riflessione” (This museum gives us an awareness of life—reflection); “Vive la paix de tous les peuples” (Long live peace for all peoples); “لا للعنصريّة لا للإرهاب” (Say no to racism! Say no to terrorism!); “We are all One;” and “One day, hopefully, there will be freedom for all.” It is striking not only how frequently, but also in how many different languages such positions are expressed.

It is evident from the entries in our visitors’ book that Menashe Kadishman’s installation “Schalechet—Fallen Leaves” leaves a lasting impression. Photo: Alexa Kürth

The new project sparked my curiosity and I found myself wondering, in conclusion, which age groups prefer which mode of comment making, the sticky notes or the visitors’ book. I thereupon spent several hours observing visitors in this area of the exhibition—this, too, is occasionally a part of my work in visitor evaluation. It was evident that the traditional visitors’ book appeals mainly to visitors aged 40+. The younger age group of 17 to 25-year-olds tends to prefer sticky notes, reaching for a note and ballpoint pen to “post” their impressions of the museum in the classically analog manner.

Alexa Kürth is delighted by the varied feedback expressed in writing and drawings, for it provides museum staff with invaluable information. She gladly takes this opportunity to thank all past and future authors of sticky notes and visitors’ book entries.

The end of May, as the first palpable rays of sun shone in Berlin, offered the perfect occasion for an outing to Berlin’s Kreuzberg neighborhood. There the artists Maria and Natalia Petschatnikov showed me their atelier and told me about “Sparrows” and “4 Euros,” the two objects they made for the Jewish Museum Berlin’s art vending machine. They also talked about their current projects and responded with good humor to all of my questions above and beyond the subject of art.

Michaela Roßberg: You work together and you’re twins – identical twins. What is it like to work so closely? How do you develop ideas and work on projects? And does one or the other of you start with an image of the finished work in mind?

Maria: We do a lot through dialogue. It isn’t that one of us has an idea and, once a project is finished, could say: “That was my idea.” Our work emerges from a joint process. For instance, we walk through the city and see interesting things that get us thinking. We talk about them, and together, start forming ideas.

Natalia: The urban environment is something that frequently inspires us. Because we spend a lot of time together in observation, a lot of our work features the so-called little things of everyday life, like animals or public transportation.

What did you think when the Jewish Museum Berlin asked you about participating in the new series for the art vending machine? Why did you decide to do it?

Natalia: First of all, we have a lot of respect for the institution of the museum. But also, the project gives us the chance to tell something about ourselves and our work. We produced 400 objects for the vending machine, which means that hopefully we are reaching 400 people with our art. The feeling that you reach people with your own work is very important for artists.

Maria: We find the idea very good, as well. Art is often elitist: we can’t afford our friends’ work and they can’t afford ours. The great thing about the art vending machine is that it builds a lovely bridge between art and the museum’s visitors. We don’t make a distinction between our work for 4 euros or 400 euros. We put the same effort into both. In addition, the appreciation and respect for us as artists was pleasing, along with the impressive amount of effort the people in charge of the project made, even though the works only cost 4 euros.

Normally an artist produces one, or perhaps a few, pieces of one artwork, not 200, as for the art vending machine. Doesn’t the sheer quantity get frustrating at some point?

Natalia: On the contrary, as you work on multiple pieces from the same model, your connection to the work changes. You start to play with it; you experience it differently.

Even when it’s the 150th time?

(Both laugh)

Maria: It went really well with the “Sparrows” for the vending machine because we cast them. It was a lot of work, but not as much work as the paintings. But then even with the “4 Euros” paintings, we had specific reasons for them: there was a conceptual level to them. For us that was really a commentary on what’s happening in our field. Who decides how much a work of art is worth? Who does the appraisal?

Natalia: So museum visitors will get a piece of art by us that costs 4 euros, and for this 4 euros, they receive 4 euros back, only now as a painting that shows the coins.

Together with every object in the art vending machine there’s a leaflet with information about the artists and the ideas behind the works. Accompanying yours, we read that – in your opinion – small things often reflect larger social and historical tendencies. I find that fascinating. Could you talk more about that?

Natalia: You can see the way this works in Berlin in particular with, for instance, public transportation like the tram. There haven’t been trams in West Berlin since the 70s because they were considered too loud, a disturbance. In the East though, the network of trams was extensively developed. After reunification, people noticed that the tram significantly improves the quality of life because you can get through city traffic much more easily by tram and it’s more environmentally friendly. Now the tram network is being expanded.

Maria: Or simply coffee-to-go. Not even in German, “zum Mitnehmen”, but “to go”. How have people or society itself developed such that suddenly we want to drink our coffee while moving? Why did no one think of that before – to walk down the street with his coffee in his hand? People used to sit quietly somewhere to drink their coffee.
We try to carve out the remarkable little things that could seem trivial, but that we think demonstrate such tendencies. Like archeologists or anthropologists, we try to render these things perceptible. Imagine what will happen when someone finds a coffee-to-go cup hundreds of years from now. Researchers will probably try to draw conclusions about the society of 2015 from objects like these.

What are you working on at the moment? Is that a detail from the flea market at Berlin’s Mauerpark? At any rate I recognize the Jahn Stadium, being a soccer fan.

Natalia: Yes, we saw exactly this scene that you see on the wall, at the flea market. We took a photograph and then painted it in oils on a lot of little metal plates. We found the old pieces of furniture being sold there fascinating, together with their reflections in the puddles on the ground around them.

Maria: The work is part of a project called “Berlin & Berlin”. We showed this installation consisting of paintings and objects at the German Week in St. Petersburg last April. We find flea markets so interesting because they offer a likeness of society at this very moment and they bring so many things together that would never otherwise be together. Such as a Barbie doll with a Russian nesting doll. Both are emblematic of different worlds but now they’re for sale in the same box.

Most of your works have to do with Berlin. What does the city mean to you?

Maria: We try to investigate each place we live on a visual level. Berlin is special though: I find that this city has unbelievably many levels. They aren’t all happy or funny, but the deeper you go, the more stories open up.

Natalia: We aren’t politicians or historians. We observe the world on a different level, the visual one. When we moved here, it was clear that we needed to live in the East.

Maria: After reunification the Eastern part of the city was more exciting for artists and young people, much cheaper, and it offered more possibility. A lot of houses for artists emerged and people were able to found new galleries. We still feel this energy. But now we’re starting to discover West Berlin. You can find exciting angles on history and great places for art there. So – we will always have material for new projects in Berlin.

During the three-hour interview Michaela Roßberg not only learned a lot about artists in Berlin, but also received some excellent travel tips for St. Petersburg and Moscow.

P.S.: Further information about the artwork of Maria and Natalia Petschatnikov and the other artists of the art vending machine can be found here.

I’m meeting Georg Sadowicz in his atelier in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen. The Berlin-based artist was born in Liegnitz, Poland, on the German border. Since April, two of his pieces – precursors to larger work – have been made available to visitors as a limited run in the Jewish Museum Berlin’s art vending machine. They are titled, “The Cantor” and “The Mill.” Sadowicz’s atelier is a mere hundred meters from the grounds of a former Stasi detention center, now a memorial site. The sight of it troubles me, but the unease vanishes as soon as I step into Sadowicz’s atelier.

Georg Sadowicz has an eventful life story. When he was 16, his family moved from Poland to Nuremberg in West Germany. He went onto study visual arts in Dresden and was a protégé to Ralf Kerbach, who taught at the College of Visual Arts, Painting and Graphic Design there. Max Uhlig was also a major influence on Sadowicz, serving as his mentor and supporter. Moving to Berlin permanently about 15 years ago, he found the artistic and financial possibilities he couldn’t in other cities.

Immediately following his studies, Sadowicz focused first on painting then on linoleum cuts. Each image in the creation of a linoleum cut goes through a complex production process from the first template to the negative cutter in the material to its final coloring. The result isn’t always predictable: “Some templates have been lying around my atelier for more than a year while others seem to fail through the course of printing. You could compare the emergence of my work to a game of chess. I plan the moves in advance and want to win. But they could be wrong. You don’t know until the end of the game,” Sadowicz says about the difficulties inherent to the process, adding that he learns a great deal from failure.

Linoleum cuts inform his general approach to art. With the exception of the works made available for the art vending machine – offset prints based on smaller linoleum cuts – the artist mostly deals in large-format cuts. For Sadowicz, it’s important that the “common perspective of spatial constructs of classical art doesn’t apply when viewing it.” He is constantly questioning the traditional separation of foreground, middle ground and background. This is evident in most of his work, in that it does not contain an escape point. “I organize all the elements in a rhythmic repeating interplay so space remains ambivalent. A great deal is happening at the same time on all three levels: fore, back and middle.” This gives the appearance that many forms are part of a larger whole, which in turn seems to be further subdivided into more detailed scenes and symbols. Such is also the case with Sadowicz’s small-format works in the art vending machine.

My interesting visit to Sadowicz’s atelier lingers in my thoughts, not least of all because he’s given me insight into the precarious situation for many Berlin-based artists. Sadowicz told me of his former atelier in Kreuzberg, which over time became too expensive. His move to the factory building in Hohenschönhausen is emblematic of the relocation of Berlin’s artists from the center to its outskirts.

Kilian Gärtner – who now no longer finds it necessary to search for escape points in art – made his way to Hohenschönhausen.

P.S.: Further information about the artwork and the other artists of the art vending machine can be found here.

Anyone who walks through the first floor of our permanent exhibition has inevitably stumbled across our ‘art vending machine.’ The machine almost seems to be whispering, in two languages, “Kauf mich, buy me.” Labels gleam colorfully from the compartments but you won’t notice more than that at first. If you get curious, though, and come closer, you will read the inscription, “Kunst / Art” in big typeface, and along the vending machine’s side, “60 x art by Jewish artists in Berlin.” Now you notice the coin slots, where you can put in your 4 euros.

With the right change in your pocket and a little audacity, you can start the experiment. The coins fall with a clatter into the shaft, you pull the heavy flap up, the compartment opens, and there’s the mysterious package. Since the back side is sheer, you’ll get an idea of your purchase at a glance, either taking an immediate shine to it or becoming disconcerted. The bright packaging is easily removed and now you can examine the object more closely. Inside the transparent bag, you have not only the unique item that you just bought, but also a pink notecard with stories and information about the work of art and the artist who made it. All the pieces in the art vending machine were created by Jewish artists who currently live and work in Berlin.

Every day the exhibition’s technician, from the outside company Leitwerk, checks to see that the vending machine is functioning properly, tightens a screw here or there when necessary, and fills the shelves with new works of art.

You will find these artworks in our vending machines starting August 2014, all mysteriously wrapped up like this, of course. There will be a total of 1400 pieces made by seven different artists. Let them surprise you: come buy some vending machine art!

30 July 2014 is International Friendship Day. But how do we commemorate friendship? Or how do we make it visible? We consulted with communications designer Lina Khesina to find out. She devised a pair of ‘friendship buttons’ that you can get at the moment from the art vending machine in our permanent exhibition. One of them features the word “Tsemed” in Hebrew script, and the other one the word “Chemed.”

The buttons “Tsemed” and “Chemed”. Photo courtesy of the artist

Lisa Albrecht: Lina, why did you develop this item in particular for the art vending machine?
I had the idea of showing the beauty of the Hebrew language and transmitting it in an everyday way. I don’t actually speak Hebrew myself, but purely from a musical perspective I find it and Spanish the two most beautiful languages. So I really wanted to discover Hebrew for myself and find a constellation of words in the language that I could play with. That’s how these buttons with the wordplay emerged.

How did the wordplay occur to you?
In Russian, best friends are often called “nje rasléj wodá”, which more or less means “even water cannot destroy this bond.” I did some research on whether there’s such an idiom in Hebrew as well and thus learned about “Tsemed Chemed.” Translated literally, it means “sweet entanglement” or “fine pair”, and is an expression for ‘close friends.’

What do these two words have to do with the buttons?
Buttons get sewed on with a thread and become then ‘entangled,’ or interwoven, with the material. Close friends experience something similar, even when they live thousands of kilometers apart. Like the buttons, they’re connected to each other by the thread and the adage.

How important to you is a connection over a great distance?
I think these days we all have friends on other continents, whom we don’t see very often. We have the connection now via the internet of course. But we could also feel the connection to a friend just by touching a button. That has something personal, something beautiful – as long as you don’t immediately lose the button!

The buttons before being dyed. Photo courtesy of the artist

How did you get the idea to design buttons? You usually work as an illustrator, right?
Buttons can be a symbol for connecting one thing with another. Strictly speaking, this is their only function. And though I chose buttons, I actually stayed with the medium of illustration or graphic design – just on a different material. But it’s really the same thing: it’s applied art, not just another souvenir that gets put on a shelf somewhere. This has a purpose and the capacity to remain meaningful and alive.

Inscribing the buttons. Photo courtesy of the artist

How exactly did you produce the buttons?
They were cut out with a laser and had a very pleasant wood smell at the beginning. Then I dyed one side, and then the other. And finally I added the words – two hundred times. I always double-checked them to be sure I was writing them correctly, because the only difference between “Tsemed” and “Chemed” is the first letter. At the end I varnished the buttons and then packaged them.

What should our visitors do with the buttons?
Visitors who get these two buttons will either have a friend standing next to them – because you usually don’t go to a museum alone – or they’ll have someone in mind, their connection with whom they’d like to intensify. They can each sew the button onto a piece of clothing, in a book, or on a backpack, so they always have it with them.

Do you carry one of your buttons too?
Sadly I gave them all away. But if I still had one copy I would carry it with me.

To whom would you give the second button?
I can think of a number of people. But then in a way it’s already missing the point: you really need to find exactly the right friend, the one person you want to have it, because you only have the one button. I think I would send the second button to a friend in Belarus who has inspired me in many ways. She’s a musician and puppet theater director. We’re creating a little puppet theater piece together at the moment.

Apropos the right friendship: what is the mark of a true ‘close friend’ for you?
With the right friend, you can be just as you are – and not someone else, as we sometimes wish we were. Having friends is important for staying true to yourself.

For more by and about Lina Khesina, check out her website www.flyingfly.de And on 30 July 2014 at the Jewish Museum Berlin for International Friendship Day our art vending machine will be filled exclusively with “Tsemed Chemed”. Come by – preferably with your best friend.

Lisa Albrecht, Media

]]>http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2014/07/friendship-you-can-touch/feed/0In World War Ihttp://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2014/04/in-world-war-i/
http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/2014/04/in-world-war-i/#commentsTue, 15 Apr 2014 07:00:57 +0000http://www.jmberlin.de/blog-en/?p=2018The Festival of Liberation at the Front

Yesterday evening, Monday, 14 April 2014, was the start of the eight-day Passover festivities. These kick off each year with the first Seder, the name of which derives from the Hebrew word seder, meaning order, because a particular ritual sequence is observed the entire evening.

The ritual Seder program is laid down in the Haggadah, an often beautifully illustrated book. (Incidentally, some especially precious Haggadot are currently on display in our special exhibition “The Creation of the World” and our director of archives recently described in his blog why even a nondescript Haggadah might be of great value to a museum.) Traditional texts and songs are recited from the Haggadah. Symbolic dishes and drinks deck the tables, ready to be consumed at specific moments during the evening.

But why is this night different from all other nights? This is a question that Jews all over the world ask themselves year after year at the Seder dinner. The answer is: it is the festival of liberation, for it commemorates the Israelites’ exodus from slavery in ancient Egypt. Everyone is supposed to feel, each year, as if she or he personally is about to leave Egypt. As a token of tribute to this new-won freedom, people comfortably recline while eating and drinking—for to take this position was the prerogative solely of free individuals in antiquity, not of slaves.

In our permanent exhibition this year we are showing a photo taken at a Seder in 1917. However the group of people it depicts appears to be anything but comfortably at ease. The people in this photograph are not celebrating in their trusted family circle or among friends. The photograph shows German soldiers who fought on the Eastern Front during the First World War.

The field rabbi Jacob Sonderling organized a Seder table for them in the palace theatre in Jelgava (German name: Mitau; now in Latvia). That night, in addition to traditional texts, the men sang the German translation of the Dutch hymn of Thanksgiving “Wilt heden nu treden” (We Gather Together). This song in which God’s assistance in combat is requested was a favorite of the then German emperor, Wilhelm.

The small town of Jelgava, part of the Russian Empire at the time, had been under occupation by German troops and in use as a military base since 1 July 1915. Most of the indigenous population had had to leave the city after the German military requisitioned their homes. Today, we can hardly begin to imagine which feelings and thoughts were in the minds and hearts of the German-Jewish soldiers who celebrated the feast of liberation in that place.

Monika Flores Martínez and Julia Kouzmenko, Permanent Exhibition

PS: Our heartfelt thanks to Aldis Barševskis from the Ģ. Eliass Jelgava History and Art Museum for his support of our research.

Alexis Hyman Wolff in her exhibition Zur Zeit at the Museum der Dinge, Berlin, June 2013. Photo courtesy of the artist.

One of the works in our art vending machine is a candle shaped like a root, made by the artist and curator Alexis Hyman Wolff. In this interview, she offers insight into the development of the work:

Christiane Bauer: Why did you make a candle for the art vending machine?
Alexis Hyman Wolff: Thinking about the small size of the objects and the temporary home they would find in the vending machine, I wanted to reflect on the idea of the souvenir, a central theme in museums. Candles are used for memorial in many cultures. In Jewish tradition, a yortsayt candle is lit to remember a loved one on the anniversary of their death.

What is special about the material you used?
The candles are made out of beeswax from a beekeeping supplier in Berlin. I understand that beeswax is one of the few materials that burn without producing black smoke, which could explain the belief that burning beeswax candles is good for the air. According to a European folk custom, when someone dies, a member of the family must go to the hive and “tell the bees,” and also invite them to the funeral. This tradition suggests a link between bees and the spirit world.

How important is the aspect of “remembrance” in your work?
I understand remembrance to be directly linked to loss and how we cope with it. In a world marked by transience and mortality, work in museums attempts to give knowledge, objects and stories a longer life, or a second life, in the service of generations to come. Remembrance, and finding ways to honor and understand the past, is at the core of this work.

How does the candle you created for the art vending machine take part in discussions on “remembrance” and “memorabilia”?
The candle is a small and modest object, which has enormous symbolic power: creating light in the darkness and harnessing fire. In the past, in medieval churches for example, candles were used to measure time. I like the idea that the candle opens up a period of time that is dedicated to remembering. The wax is transformed and eventually consumed as it carries out its work, and in the end all that remains is memory. Plato wrote about memory being like a wax tablet upon which our experiences are impressed, if only for a brief time. All of these aspects make the candle a complex object.
Furthermore, the candles in the art vending machine are shaped like roots, so that they might be able to help us to reflect on our origins, our ancestors, and the things that are “under the ground” or remain unseen. How do we remember what we cannot see? This question fascinates me.

You found the roots that shaped the candles in the vicinity of Los Angeles. How did you choose them, and how did you cast them as candles?

Finding the roots was a great adventure and very surprising. I thought that the roots in the forest would look just like taper candles, perhaps a bit curvier, but they were wildly different: some looked like knots, others more like branches or lightning bolts. After I had chosen six different roots that had the right size, a dear friend and expert mold-maker at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles showed me how to mount the roots and wrap them in silicone-dipped gauze strips. We then sliced the molds to extract the original roots. For each candle, the molds had to be tied up with string and nestled in sand before the melted wax could be poured in. Then the candles had to be extracted at just the right temperature for them to keep their shape, without getting brittle. My kitchen in Berlin was a candle production headquarters for several weeks. That was a nice winter activity!

What should our visitors do with the root candle?
I leave it up to the individual to decide whether they will burn the root candle or not, and hope that either way it might be a good reminder to those who take it home.

One of the works in our art vending machine is a booklet which provides an insight into the inner-workings of many of the Israeli Kibbuzim. With sober drawings and a text that is based on archival documents, artist Atalya Laufer (b. 1979) exposes a particular aspect of growing up on a Kibbutz. As one of the last generation of children to be raised in communal children’s houses (Batei Yeladim), she takes us on a journey through time and into the passing world of the Kibutzim.

The text in the booklet is based on protocols of night shifts that were taken in the early 1970s. In these protocols incidents and particularities in every house, during every night shift, had been recorded. Owing to these we can readily reconstruct the daily life in children’s houses.

“I simply do not know what it is like to live with my parents. I find it fascinating that as a child, if I were woken up by a bad dream, I would have had to get out of bed and into the hallway where I could cry onto a small reciever hung up high on the wall with the hope that someone (the person on a night shift) would come. Today, this seems really odd to me.“

The names in the booklet have been translasted quite freely. As often the case with Israeli names, they are names of animals, trees or have biblical origin. The translation allows a distance from the original material, and at the same time, creates an enigmatic narrative, somewhere between a straightforward childrens tale and a surrealistic, dark but humorous one.

In turn, the drawings play with the text and the names associatively. They are based on photographs from the kibbutz as well as on paintings by Pieter Bruegel. The connection between Flemish history, genre painting and life on the Kibbutz is also somewhat puzzling. Atalya explains:

“To me, there is a clear link between Brueghel and the Kibbutz. If my memory doesnt fail me, there were often framed reproductions on the walls of the children houses or, my parents may have had a book of his prints. But, of course, perhaps needless to say, Breughel is regarded today for his detailed representation of ‘mysterious’ peasant life. The comparison between Kibbutz and rural life is relevant, at least on the level of ‘mysterious’ innate structures, traditions, languages and rituals that for an ‘outsider’ may be difficult to understand but at the same time likely to find fascinating.”

For Laufer the process of artistic appropriation of a particular reference material begins often with drawing from a reproduction of the original. After this relatively direct transformation, she develops the image into a complex of lines and motifs through layering several drawings on top of each other until. Similarly, the text is also a collage of several text extracts.

Laufer refers to her works as “appropriated readymades”. The book is neither biographical nor fictitious and can be neither easily pigeonholed or taken out of a particular drawer. Nevertheless, with a bit of luck on your next visit to the museum, you could pull out one of the booklets from the art vending machine. Flipping through a few pages of the booklet offers an impression of Atalya Laufer’s artwork.